And Then Nothing
by Kitt SummerIsle
Summary: Skywarp survives the death of his trine.
1. One

_Title: And Then Nothing_

_Rating: T_

_Verse: G1-ish_

_Genre: drama, angst_

_Characters: Skywarp, Ratchet, Optimus Prime, twins_

_Warnings: kinda dark but nothing is explicit. Mentioned character death, dub-con and mpreg._

_Summary: The idea came from a long talk with Starfire/Skywinder about the rarity of fics in which Skywarp survives the death of his trine-mates, as opposed to the survivor being Starscream or Thundercracker. As a result, it is not nice, it is dark and angsty - but nothing I warned for is explicit, so it should be fairly safe to read._

* * *

**One**

Skywarp dragged his heavy pedes to the balcony door, hurting all over. He more or less fallen into a heap at the transparent steel window, claws scratching on it with a squeal as he slid down to the floor. His dirty plates that he wouldn't call either black or purple any more shook with exhaustion and pain. Scratched, dented wings twitched behind him drooping and the once proud Seeker didn't even have the strength to hitch them up.

Why would he care? He was neither proud nor even a Seeker any more. The dark sky outside stared back uncaring of him, the night cycle nearly pitch black all around the tower. Even the so-called day cycle was dark, broken only by the smallish headlights of the grounders moving about on their affairs, far below on the ground. The skies remained dark forever, after the plans to steer the planet around a new sun remained nothing but a dream.

No light would rise however long he stared the outside. He was fortunate to survive, he was told, but Skywarp couldn't see the luck in it. Not that he tried. No more fliers… it was something Thundercracker might brood about or Starscream might gripe; not a topic that Skywarp ever thought that he'd have to contemplate. But seeing the dark sky orn after orn, silently victorious over their attempt to conquer it made him think strange things.

He had plenty of time to think. The twins were out far more than in and they preferred each other's company anyway. After fragging him, that is. He had his own berth, his own room and was expected to drag his chassis back to it to recharge after they were done with him. He had a good place with them, he told himself. Better be ignored than abused. A few dents from their strong grip was nothing and they never forced him to interface… he'd complied first.

It was all nothing compared to the never healing wound on his spark. A servo rose instinctly, the broken claws curling over his dirty cockpit the dark helm thudding onto the glassteel. It hurt. It burned like Pitfire and nothing he could do eased it. Nothing Ratchet could do healed it and the medic had left shaking his helm, murmuring to Sideswipe something that the former teleporter couldn't hear.

Skywarp wasn't the brightest processor around but he felt what that was about. A wound that never heals means it'd consume him sooner than later. He never really expected to survive them. He never expected to be the last. That Starscream might one orn was deactivated by either Megatron or a lucky Autobot… yeah, that was in the cards. He and TC could've managed that, because they'd have had each other. But for him to be the survivor of the trine?

He couldn't even see what happened, only saw the already gray frames in the ring of the Autobots looking down on them, while pain attempted to consume his spark from inside out. It was winning and Skywarp had only hazy memories what happened afterwards. Ratchet was among them, so the medic probably saved him… for what or why, Skywarp had no idea. When he came to, there was only a terrible emptiness in his spark, but he couldn't even scream any more.

Ohh, but it broke him. Pranks were forgotten. Just to think of one brought Thundercracker's stern, exasperated expression out and Skywarp would cry like a lost sparkling for joors. For awhile he planned to revenge them and it sustained his will to live. But he wasn't Starscream, he never planned anything but a prank and even that was before the slave codes.

No, they weren't called that. Behavioral coding, the Autobots said. He wasn't a slave, no. Just couldn't fly, teleport, or even walk anywhere freely. He was free to think, hurt and frag the twins. The apartment wasn't a prison, it even had windows… Skywarp couldn't decide really if the Autobots thought it a favour or had any idea how much it hurt to look out and unable to fly.

Maybe they did think he'd appreciate it. They weren't cruel - well, at least most of them weren't – but they were all grounders. Even those young fliers were gone in that last battle, some of them deactivated, the others following them shortly. The Con fliers too, except for the three of them. Skywarp heard later that Astrotrain survived and escaped and he was seen much later, falling into a star, unable to pull out of the gravity well, due to his lack of energon.

Energon was in short supply on Cybertron too. He wasn't exactly starving… but that was only because without flying or teleporting he actually needed less than a grounder of his size. The twins always gave him his rations fairly and it was almost as much as they used to have on the Nemesis. Better quality even. And he knew that in this, even the bots weren't hypocrites – they had the same rations, only adjusted to size, barely enough for any mech not only the former remaining Cons.

The distraught Seeker leaned heavily on the glassteel door and when it swung out, he nearly fell on his faceplates. They always left it locked, but Sideswipe must have forgotten it this time. He shuffled forward on dirty knees, not caring to stand up even, pushing the door outward, the dark sky calling him like an elusive lover. The air was biting cold outside and heavy with fumes… a fitting environment for his misery, Skywarp thought, a bitter scowl twisting his lipplates.

He saw the smoke twist into shapes in the dark, shapes that were… was he hallucinating? Skywarp thought that he saw winged shapes among the mist and fog but knew it to be impossible. He was the fragging last one on the planet with wings, for Primus's sake… he almost said functional wings, but then, his weren't functional either. They were no more wings than those on the Praxians' backs…

Hot tears escaped again from dim red optics, rolling down on his dirty faceplates, making the blackness around him even blurrier. Out here, at the balcony's edge, even the apartment door could hardly be seen, as he didn't turn on the lights inside. It was like floating in the darkness, in the pain and misery that ate him up like a living thing. It was like nothing existed only himself and the pain.

Skywarp hugged his cold, trembling chassis and rocked on his knees like a sparkling, well past caring about the tears and his posture. He was hurting far too much this cycle. Not even the lingering charge from his overload could fight the encroaching pain that ate him from the inside and the cold that gripped him from the outside.

He wasn't sure how or why he got to the balcony railing. Looking down the city was just as dark as the skies, no cars driving about, no headlights breaking the blackness this cycle. He knew that the apartment was high up in the tower, he saw the ground sometimes when the streets were lit for a festival or such. Not for a while now, as the energon crisis started to grow serious again.

Skywarp stared down into the pitch blackness, not even realizing how he stood up and grabbed the railing, hunching forward as the pain in his spark made him curl over. His servos tightened on the railing, strong enough to leave dents on the cold, dead metal. Tears fell into the abyss, hot drops of misery lamenting the loss. He leaned into the darkness and it caressed his hot fever with a cool touch.

"Sky!" - Sideswipe's voice was nearly nervous behind him – "Come in please…"

He didn't react, only hunched forward a bit more. It hurt. Skywarp wanted the hurt to end. Sideswipe wanted him to live. But he saw no point in it any more. There was nothing in the apartment to go back to. The darkness at least promised the pain to end.

"Don't do that, Sky…"

Skywarp felt a rare bout of anger. Rare for him these orns anyway. Who was this grounder to tell him what to do? Caretaker, they said, but why did he need one? What did he understood anyway?

"Would you stay if Sunstreaker was gone?"

Silence answered him. It took Sideswipe breem before he found his voice again.

"But… you stayed."

"No. You made me stay. Saved me, Ratchet said. Did I ask to be saved?" – Skywarp felt his wings flare angrily behind him, the light from the inside showing just how unkempt and dirty they were. He hardly ever remembered the last time he visited the washracks. It didn't matter.

"We thought…"

"I didn't ask this. None of this… prison that you call charity. It is not life."

"But… you lack nothing…? You didn't say you need anything when we ask."

Skywarp snorted bitterly. No, he never asked. Freedom wasn't what they could bring him, nor were the dead. He pointed out, into the darkness.

"That's all I need."

"We can't let you fly…"

"Why though?" – he asked suddenly – "Are you, glorious, victorious Autobots so afraid of a single, broken flier in the sky?"

"No, it's not that…"

"You killed them all." – Skywarp turned to look into the blue optics. – "I'm the last fragging Seeker… Pit the last thing with wings on the planet. And you still insist to clip my wings too."

"We didn't want to…"

"But you still did." – Skywarp turned back towards the darkness whispering its siren-song to him – "They are waiting for me. They are calling for me."

"No…"

Skywarp felt rather than heard the Autobot move towards him and he acted without any further thinking. Vaulting over the railing was a sparkling's play and from then on gravity took over. He faintly heard the last shouted _No!_ from behind as the grabbing servos missed his ankle but it was quickly forgotten as he was flying again, after so much time.

The darkness embraced him in its cold grip, easing the burning pain in his spark. His wing sensors exulted in telling him the speed and the air pressure around, the long freefall till the ground feeling like flying once more. But his thrusters remained cold, the codes locking them away from his control and Skywarp wasn't made to glide.

The fall felt like ages for him in the quiet darkness caressing his hot plating like gentle black silk. He felt the pull on his spark, the wound that throbbed for so long giving way to anticipation, a hope that everything would be all right now, that he would meet his ancestors, his mates and all the fliers gone before him… and leave this tired, dank world to the grounders to rule.

Suddenly his thrusters spluttered into life after so much time in enforced silence. Skywarp fleetingly thought that it must be Sideswipe, trying to save him by making him able to fly, letting him go from the clutches of the codes. For a nanoklik, he contemplated it too, climbing out of the fall and then … what? Go back to be their obedient little flier, forever alone, grounded and hurting?

The next nanoklik though, it took the decision out of his servos. The activated thrusters resulted only in a spectacular fireball consuming what the head-on collision with the ground left from the flightless Seeker. The darkness turned into a fiery inferno and Skywarp, with his last thought felt the warmth that seeped into his broken spark.

And then nothing.

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_Bear with me, it is NOT the end of the fic. Two more chapters to come._


	2. Two

**Two**

Skywarp woke up trembling, wings clattering heavily on the berth where he lay curled up. The echoes of his screams were still reverberating within the confines of his helm. The cold touch of the dark air on his wings, the hot tracks of tears on his faceplates, the fiery burning of the fireball, consuming his frame and thoughts… they were oh-so-real. Fraggingly, frighteningly, ominously real, leaving a sharp ache in his spark and a heavy throb in his processor. The black Seeker vented heavily and climbed carefully over the two bodies he was snuggled to, not wanting to wake them up.

His spark was still spinning like a tornado and he shook with the remembered misery, the flightless fall into the darkness… he shook his helm viciously, wishing that the motion could dislodge the stuck memory bits from the recharge flux. He sneaked away from the berth quietly in the darkness of the room, pawing the counters for the half cube of high-grade he was sure he'd left somewhere… ahhh. There it was. Skywarp wasted no time tossing it back, the burn of the vicious brew scouring his intake and making his optics secrete a drop of cleanser. It still tasted awful. Sides should work on this recipe a lot more.

But it did help. The strong buzz overcame the memories of his own screams and faded the fireball that kept blossoming in his meta into the background. Not fully though and the black Seeker quietly left the room and picked up the remote that was left on the small table. Some noise would be welcome, indeed necessary to dispel the last of the lingering pictures. Cuing the audio part of the program into his comm so it wouldn't wake up anyone else, he put the TV on, turning to watch the big screen on the wall.

As he turned, he caught his own reflection on the glassteel of the balcony door and the news station blared its noise into his audials… the sounds of an explosion on some moon-base or other, an accident blossoming into a fireball, inconsequential, uninteresting… but it made him tremble once more as he stared at the balcony door's mirror-bright surface. It was the first, he thought wildly, the first time the dream pictured exactly this door he was currently staring at.

"Fragging, rust-eaten, Primus-bedamned glitching processor!"

The Seeker roared at him own reflection with a suddenly flaring anger, not caring any more whom he'd wake up with it. He hurled the remote into the glassteel door, followed by the empty cube. The sturdy contraption – and his mirror image on it - hardly even trembled at the impact but at least the cube shattered into satisfying shards that fell twinkling onto the floor.

Skywarp followed the cube and his servos shoved the door outwards with an angry, nearly hurting impact, flinging the door outwards fast on its hinges. He was thoroughly fed up with his own overactive and obnoxious imagination. Yes, so there was a balcony here, yes, it was dark outside – obviously, what else the dark cycle would be like? – and so what if they were far above the city in one of the rebuilt towers, the apartments here intentionally given to the various air frames who were particular about the clear view.

The frigid air on the balcony made him shiver and cooled his anger too. Slagging dream. Lurching towards the railing Skywarp felt his wings tremble and droop in the remembered hopeless angst. He fought a loosing battle with the pictures, the high-grade's buzz just distorting them but unable to fully dispel. No, no, NO, NOOO! He wasn't grounded, for frag's sake! His turbines growled in an angry agreement, underlining the attempt to convince his own glitched processor.

His wings twitched as Skywarp desperately tried to replace the memories of the fall with the memories of his last true flight. He was… he was flying over the Polyhexian Plains just last orn, following a trail of migrating Pyro crystals, because Perceptor insisted that they grew on energon-rich ground only and the groundpounders lost the trail on the broken surface. It was fairly boring but since the acid rains stayed away and the electric storms avoided him as well, Skywarp happily took the boring flight over a more eventful one.

Calming down slightly, the black Seeker released the balcony railing, grimacing at the dents he put there and the strained cables in his wrist joints. His wings flared up a little too, like shaking off the enforced rigidity of the dream's flightless state. Puffing out a hot vent, Skywarp turned to go back to the apartment, wondering already how it was possible that he didn't wake up anyone with that shout. Thundercracker would have…

That was when the pain struck.

Bending forward, the black Seeker fell onto his knees, arms curling over his cockpit and keened loudly into the uninterested darkness. No, he truly wasn't grounded, wasn't a slave or starved or even the last flier like the dreams insisted… but the wound on his spark was all too real. Usually the dampener that Wheeljack and Ratchet invented made him able to forget it – but not this orn, not after the dream weakening the walls he built around it, not the inadvertent remembrance to Thundercracker tearing it open afresh.

Grey frames flashed up in his processor and he cried out suddenly, plating torn and splattered with energon, small frames and big ones, Autobots looking down on them sadly as he held and shook TC's cold servo to wake up, to come back, to snap at him again; looked over to Starscream to hear the screech in frustrated anger and scold him and please make it all right again…

They never came back. The medic when he arrived could only confirm their deactivation and sedate the black Seeker, who by that time was fully mad with pain so it took three Autobots to restrain him and keep from harming himself. The length of time afterward was a blur to Skywarp; mostly offline or screaming in pain and anger, trying to claw anyone to ribbons who came close to him and wasn't _them_.

His next lucid memory was Ratchet shaking his shoulders as he sat on the berth, completely clueless as to why or how he got to be there. There was a painful throb in his spark that became his constant companion, even after bonding with the twins. It never went away fully, even as he rebuilt his life again slowly, painfully with the help of others, piecing together the broken parts until he could go on orn by orn.

Sometimes, like since the nightmares started, he wondered if it was worth the effort. Times like these, he missed them so much that no amount of comforting and love could overcome it. Why those wounds stung time and time again, he didn't know. Skywarp's processor painted him the picture of their tombs, the slabs of metal that used to be two Seekers. He never went there, it was the Autobot way of a funeral, not his… but he knew the place from the twins. The glyphs honoured them… as much as the grounder Autobots could honour the lords of the skies.

Cold comfort, that.

But remembering them still calmed Skywarp somewhat. He stood up again, wiping away the tears with an angry swipe of his servo. The darkness was cold and he shuddered slightly before turning back towards the apartment door. Casting a last glance of the twinkling skyline, Skywarp noticed the red frame in the door. How long had he been standing there?

"Sky…" – Sideswipe's voice was hesitant, the bond cautiously swirling with worry and care – "… are you all right?"

"I… no, not really." – he fought with the tears wanting to burst again.

The red twin walked over to him and embraced Skywarp in strong, protecting arms, the servos lightly petting the still trembling wings.

"It's okay… shhh… it's okay to remember them."

Skywarp hated to be weak and needing the compassion – but he did need it and he wasn't a Decepticon warrior any more having to show a strong front all the time. He was broken and welded together, the pain breaking through the cracks still and he'd take the comfort wherever he could.

"It… hurts…"

"I know…" – he really did. The bond left little to imagination and Skywarp felt the understanding rolling back from him.

"Make it go away…!"

"I would… if I could, Sky."

Skywarp whimpered but the sound never left his vocalizer. Something went missing again, something important, something hurting him… but for the love of Primus he didn't know what it was or why it was important. Why did he feel the loss all the time? Why hasn't the wound healed? Why did everything feel so unreal, so dreamlike? Why, why, why…? Skywarp struggled with the questions. He wasn't the one with all the answers… that used to be Star and TC not him.

But they weren't there any more. Only the questions and the strange doubts. A sharp pang cut into his processor, causing him to lift trembling servos and hold his heavy helm in them. The world suddenly, strangely trembled around the edges and shattered before reassembling itself. Skywarp shook his helm viciously but the pain didn't go away, nor did the hallucinations.

"Oww…! Frag!" – he yelped, pushing away Sideswipe and stumbling across the empty floor in search of… he didn't know what. Nor why.

The light coming in slants from inside the apartment wavered, painting queer glyphs onto the floor. The straights lines of the railing bent, the sharp contours of the doorway blurred, becoming a tunnel leading into ominous darkness. Skywarp's processor-ache became pounding. Then suddenly the metallic floor jumped up, towards him and he only had time for a short _Slag_! before his helm impacted on it. He felt the pain peaking before exploding inside his helm…

…and then nothing.

* * *

_Still not the end..._


	3. Three

**Three**

"I disagree with this most strongly." – the mech's voice nearly dripped with distaste.

"Your objection is noted, Ratchet" – a tired voice answered the medic – "Just like the previous hundred times."

"It is an abomination, Optimus, can't you see it?" – Ratchet held the edge of the medical berth tightly, his whole posture rigid and nearly trembling with withheld anger. – "It degrades us, it hurts him and… what are the positives, remind me again?"

"The broken spark-bond would be an agony for him more if awakened. You said so yourself."

"That I did…" – he sighed heavily, past mistakes weighing on his white shoulders – "But my recommendation was definitely not… this."

"The danger of him offlining is too great and we can't have a Carrier pass away. There aren't so many. Our survival as a race lies with him and the other one only. That is few enough as it is."

"Does it worth surviving if it means doing this to him?" No, don't answer that. I've never thought a _Prime_ would give me that answer you'd given me at the time it was decided."

"I had to make a decision for all of us, Ratchet. All the surviving Cybertronians and our future." – Optimus Prime didn't look happy having to play out this argument once again. – "Besides the council voted and we passed laws against this very thing in the future – but this one exception had to be made. Even Megatron agreed."

"Ohh, right, now we'll take morality lesson from _Megatron_?" – the irate medic sneered right back to him, the ridiculousness of his sentence making him sputter.

"Ratchet…" – the frustrated sigh was interrupted again.

"Surely that he used to be a Decepticon had not influenced you to make that decision."

"No, it wasn't a factor." – the lipplates tightened slightly under the mask he still wore, the posture rigid and holding the unease at bay. But he didn't admonish the medic for the supposition, a telling thing in itself.

"How fortunate then that Fireflight passed away. I'd've hated seeing him _used_ like this."

The Prime's flinch was clearly visible this time, but Ratchet didn't go for a cheap shot, nor did he wait him to recover.

"Or Elita-1."

"Ratchet…" – it was rare that Optimus Prime was reduced to one-word sentences. Even rarer that he growled.

"What?" – the medic looked up snarling, blue optics full of fire and righteous anger – "You made me violate my medical oath, you forced me to put him in this mess and keep him there with the not-so-subtle blackmail that others with no expertise would do it even worse - and you are squeamish about your beloved one being used like this even though it is just theoretical as she is long dead?"

"It isn't the same… wouldn't be the same situation and you know it!" – Optimus Prime turned away but Ratchet still saw the tenseness in his shoulders, the way he held his servos in fists. He just didn't care.

"No? Why not? Is there a lot of leeway in being forced to breed?"

"They wouldn't have to be… she wouldn't…" – the red shoulders slumped a bit but Ratchet was way past being compassionate with him.

"Well, have you ever asked HIM?"

The last, shouted word rang around in the otherwise quiet, secluded med-bay room. It reverberated from the empty walls and encircled the three figures in there; two of them standing with their backs towards each other, both nearly shaking with anger and frustration. The third one was lying on the berth between the two, not reacting to the argument overhead, not even to the loud yelling, indeed to nothing that was outside his helm. He couldn't.

"No. I have not." – Optimus Prime's voice was incredibly sad and mournful but holding the underlying certainty too that he'd made a decision, he considered it acceptable… and he would stick to it, no matter the arguments or his own dislike of it. He cast a last glance at the supine form on the berth, another at Ratchet's back, sighed and left the room.

The Seeker's black plating was faded and scratched, the purple accents nearly gone; instead dried energon splatters painted purplish smears all around his frame. The joints and seams looked caked with dust, some even starting to rust at the unmoving edges. Noone cared to detail a mech just lying on a berth in enforced stasis, it was enough to wash down the surfaces when absolutely necessary. Noone was comfortable being in the same room with a living proof of what they were doing for survival.

He looked so much smaller and vulnerable with the wings' outer plating removed and the inner working of the sensitive appendages bared to the outside world. They learned that no matter what fantasies the codes spun to his processor, the flight sensors only believed in direct stimulation. The cockpit was removed too and the torso plates barely held in place by a few bolts, providing an easily removable cover for the reproduction chamber and the spark casing. It wasn't like he had any more privacy, the medic thought bitterly, after being hacked so thoroughly. Still, he spread a tarp over the frame, hiding the worst from the cameras' view.

A thick cable sneaked from the device on the berthside table under his helm, providing his processor with the false reality. Another tube was connected to his tank, feeding him energon, sedatives and painkillers as needed. The faceplates were slack but the dry, cracked lipplates still held the shape of the last screams from the episode that brought the medic running here, into the isolation room of his med-bay, the home of a lone, barely surviving, broken Seeker. Ratchet snorted bitterly at the word home. It was such a nice-sounding one.

Such a lie.

It was all a lie. The apartment, the Twins taking the place of his deactivated Trine-mates, the flights, the pranks… all carefully pieced together and programmed into a virtual reality for one spark-broken, trineless Seeker to live in. To survive, as he'd deactivate if let to awaken. Home indeed…, even the occasionally appearing dreams and nightmares that were the product of his own processor weren't any more real than the matrix they created for him to exist in.

And they lost the newspark he carried, every time this dream popped up, every time Skywarp convinced himself that he was deactivated in that slagging fireball. The medic was sure that the recurring dream was the Seeker's deepest subconscious wanting to escape and be gone for good, but he could never convince the Prime of it. The aborted sparklings were called accidents and the Seeker impregnated again, unknowingly, unconsciously, living in his own world, not knowing anything about the real one.

It was atrocious, Ratchet thought bleakly as Optimus Prime left the room, satisfied that the Carrier was saved, that the Seeker dreamt on, that he still had the means of repopulating the planet… whatever it took. At least it wasn't outright rape, he grimaced inwardly – he'd achieved that much if no more. The artificial method was complex and dangerous but still better than what Megatron suggested.

He shuddered again, remembering that the eldest younglings just grew old enough so that they would start to ask the uncomfortable questions of who their carrier was and how they came to be. It was inevitable that they'd do it sooner or later. He was thanking Primus that it wasn't him who had to eventually give them the answer.

And just who could tell the truth to them with a clear conscience?

He turned back towards that truth, checking the devices that kept the Seeker alive. It had been a race to keep his damaged, failing systems chug on, shore up his spark from the trauma and in the meanwhile build him this environment as per the Prime's orders. Temporarily just at first, to help him survive the broken bond… but then they discovered that he was a rare Carrier and it changed everything.

The situation then became a permanent solution, Optimus Prime adamant that the racial survival took precedence over the individual. When Ratchet quoted at him his own oft said belief, Megatron chuckled once, darkly, ominously while the Prime turned away… and the medic could only stare at them. Since then Skywarp was his duty to keep alive and his guilt to plague his conscience.

The remains of the clipped claws curled into fists by his side, his engine rumbling, vents straining to clear the hot air from overheated systems. The brace that enclosed the bare wings registered the will to move and created the appropriate sensation of air and movement. The lipplates moved slightly, whispering something that Ratchet didn't want to hear. The racing spark slowed and regulated itself as dream-Sideswipe calmed down the distraught Seeker suffering his numerous broken bonds… in and out of the dreams.

Another thing he could never convince the council to consider. The sparklings they took away from him, the ones that he lost on his own… they all created new wounds on the already heavily scarred, nearly fragmented spark. In effect they were killing him slowly and painfully with each newspark created… and what did they give to him for it? A false reality of being happy and free, while keeping him in this bare room and used for their own good.

Were he not a medic, sworn to save lives not ending them… Ratchet would have felt tempted to pull the plug and save the Seeker from the misery and lies and the their atrocious idea of a solution. As it was he cursed them ornly, argued with the council, Optimus, sometimes even Megatron; he turned and bounced on his berth every dark cycle, plagued with nightmares of his own… but carried on the duty he abhorred because he had to. There were a few who agreed with him but never enough to overturn the decision of the council. Ratchet cast one more glance at him before he too left the room and silence spread its blanket over the Seeker again.

Skywarp dreamt on. He felt the pain and anger fading, elusive, slipping out of his grasp, his understanding. A heavy fog enveloped his processor, just as imaginary arms embraced his shoulders; drawing him inexorably into recharge, forgetting, going on. He was safe, protected and whatever disturbed him before was gone now. Consciousness faded and let the frustrating doubts go.

Time went by as he dreamt increasingly disturbed dreams.

Ghosts swirled around him, winged shapes, blue-red and tricoloured, their arms reaching out for him, calling him. Others joined them, gathering transparently around his tired frame, looking down on him sadly. One came forth, a small youngling, with red optics and a red stripe on his black wings. He gently caught hold of his limp servo and pulled. A tear rolled down from his optic that flashed anger - but shone with determination.

Skywarp felt elated for a short while when the life-support was disconnected.

And then nothing.


End file.
